'Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen' Review (Xbox 360)

Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen expands and improves on the original title in countless ways.

In many ways, Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen is the game the vanilla Dragon’s Dogma should have been. I don’t mean that as a slight to the original game—which I proclaimed Best RPG of 2012. Rather, it’s more of an observation. So much about the original title is fixed or improved in Dark Arisen that I’ve honestly had more fun playing it this time around than I did before.

Nor am I simply referring to the new content when I say that. The new content is excellent, of course. New gear, new monsters, new areas to explore. It’s all fantastic. I’ve had some of the best fights I’ve had in the entire game in the new Bitterblack Isle content. In fact, a couple of them have been among my favorite combat moments in any game I’ve played.

But even the overhauled vanilla content is more fun now. Menus have been cleaned up. Though the changes are subtle, navigating the back-end is much more intuitive than before. Perhaps the most noticeable addition to the game is the HD texture pack which not only makes everything look leaps and bounds better, but cuts down on loading times. Lots of other smaller changes permeate the experience.

Of course, not everything is fixed.

Pawns still chatter an irritating mix of condescending advice, stating the obvious, and ludicrous praise. One moment they’re telling you what an honor it is to fight beside the Arisen; the next they’re telling you not to swing blindly at your foe. They still have a terrible sense of timing, too, clamoring on about how “They have the advantage!” just as your last enemy is dispatched, or describing a seriously weak goblin as “A troubling foe!”

Troubling Foes

Speaking of which, there are some seriously troubling new foes in Dark Arisen. I started a new character rather than porting over my high-level character from the original game, and I learned soon enough that I would need to improve my stats quite a bit before venturing into the new content.

Even at about level 25, however, the new content is hard. I’ve tried it on all three difficulty settings, and even on Easy a fight against a giant Cockatrice left me a bit breathless. A subsequent fight against the above-pictured goblins was nearly as difficult.

If it’s challenge you’re after, the new content has plenty to offer. Plenty of monster variety, too, and new quests and loot.

Fast-travel has been improved immensely in the game, with more Port Crystals spread out across Gransys and more ferry stones. If you already own Dragon’s Dogma, you get an eternal ferry stone as well. All of this greatly reduces the tedium of travel.

I still wish there were mounts or some other form of travel that could get you about the world quicker without resorting to teleportation, but I wasn’t expecting that drastic of a change this time around.

Other improvements abound. Characters can unlock an entirely new tier of skills, giving you more powers and customization options. Same goes for weapons, which can be enhanced further than in the vanilla game.

Likewise, character creation has a few extra options including more skin colors (my Pawn started life as a blue-skinned behemoth this time around.) The Pawn rating and gifting system is gone as well, apparently. Since nobody ever gave Pawns worthwhile gifts to begin with, I’m not sad to see this go.

On top of the new texture pack, you can also download a Japanese voice-over. This is cool, I think, especially since I find myself so annoyed by the Pawn chatter still.

For owners of the original Dragon’s Dogma, you get to port your character over to the new game. You also get 100,000 rift crystals, the aforementioned eternal ferry stone, and the Gransys Armor pack. I’m not a huge fan of the armor sets. They’re mostly clothing suits from NPCs in Gran Soren. They look cool, but they’re full sets. You can’t mix and match.

Part of what I love so much about Dragon’s Dogma is the ability to really customize the heck out of your character. The huge variety of cloaks, clothing, armor, shields, and weapons can really give each character a unique look and feel.

The question is, for $40 is Dark Arisen worth the purchase? For people who don’t own the original game, I really can’t recommend it highly enough. It’s a great deal for an enormous amount of content, all of which has been polished and improved.

It’s a bit trickier if you already own the title. The perks are nice, but it’s still a pretty penny to hand over for a game you already own.

For my part, as a big fan of Dragon’s Dogma, I think it’s well worth the sticker price. Playing it this time around has been a great experience thanks to all the small improvements and the better graphics, not to mention the new content. (P.S. Yes, the tearing is still here, and quite a few bugs haven’t been ironed out, but I’m pretty forgiving of this sort of thing when the gameplay is so good.)

If you were on the fence about the original game, on the other hand, I doubt there’s much here that will change your mind. Mechanically, it’s still the same game. The story is still fairly opaque and sparse. I still wish there was more life in Gransys—more villages, more fortresses, more people. I wish there was a livelier populace in Gran Soren as well. If that stuff bothered you before, it will bother you still.

And I really, really wish that Capcom would implement some sort of camp mechanism to the game. I want to be able to set up camp and have Pawns take watch while we rest up, rather than having to find a pre-made camp or an inn. Then again, the improved fast travel makes this somewhat less important.

I also found myself wishing Pawn AI was better, or that I had more commands at my fingertips than “Go!” and “Come!” and “Help!” I’d be happy with either the system from Dragon Age: Origins or Mass Effect, to be honest. DA:O has pretty flat combat, but the strategy is great. Take Dragon’s Dogma’s much better and more interesting action and give it the depth of play found in more tactical RPGs, and you could really have something special.

Along the same lines, the potential for co-op play is so huge I’m almost surprised it wasn’t implemented. The word “epic” is seriously overused, but co-op play in Dragon’s Dogma would be just that.

One way or another, this is a great addition to a really ambitious, impressive new IP. For all my quibbles with Capcom’s DLC policies, they’ve really struck gold with this franchise. I can’t wait to see where it goes next-generation, especially if the mysterious Deep Down title is in fact a continuation of Dragon’s Dogma. Who knows? With next-gen architecture basically the same as PC, maybe we’ll even see the franchise on Steam someday.

Post Your Comment

Post Your Reply

Forbes writers have the ability to call out member comments they find particularly interesting. Called-out comments are highlighted across the Forbes network. You'll be notified if your comment is called out.

Comments

I agree with the coop play sentiment. This game would have been so much better if you could form a party of coop partners and npc companions with actual depth. The pawn system strikes me as a bit strange.

The pawn system is a neat idea though. It’s like buying other players cars in Forza, in the online auction house. Pawns is sorta the same thing, you get something that has been crafted by another player.

I wouldn’t mind if Dragon’s Dogma 2 had the pawn system and co-op.

And good review Erik! Makes me really want to make a purchase. Seems like they fixed all the small details they could without totally overhauling the game, which is nice. I was only expecting more content of Dark Arisen but more port crystals and ferry stones is nice addition. I’ll probably buy this soon!

I’m not saying that the pawn system is not unique, but I think the game would work better with companions with actual back stories and personalities (perhaps in coop, the friend can take control of one of these companions).

While playing the original, I kept thinking that the game would be more fun with a friend playing. The only thing standing in the way was the potion/item system. There are too many items and you can’t pause in multiplayer to select the right one.

This is a trivial matter I think, but I’ll ask it anyway. I’m rather confused, is this avaible as download or physical copy only? My friends said physical only with the original game included. Now I’m really confused here.

The addition of a Japanese voice pack was nice. Clumsy, ham-fisted, hammy generic fantasy dialogue sounds a lot better spoken in something other than my native tongue.

This applies similarly to the Witcher, although I have enough Polish left over from my childhood to know that those two games suffer from a terrible English translation. The voiceacting is also crap in the English versions, which is why I inevitably play them in Polish with subtitles in order to help me with my rustiness and occasionally make me cringe from the horrendous writing. Even when reading the subtitles I can’t help but imagine the flat English language performances and Geralt’s out-of-place growly Wolverinesque American accent (yes smart-a**es I know Wolverine is Canadian; so am I- we never forget that fact).

But I digress… DD: Dark Arisen is a great bargain. Vanilla game plus expansion plus HD textures plus Japanese voice pack all for the low price of forty bucks. Grab it if you like fun hack & slash RPGs where a little thought and strategy matter. It also features rich character customization.

I’ve had my eye on this game for awhile and have been waiting for the expansion to come out — I’m probably going to buy this one after I start and finish Valkyria Chronicles. One question, how is the combat? I mean is it a button mash fest or is their some tactics and skill to it (I’m a huge Dark/Demon Souls fan so this is huge for me.)

This can be categorized as hack and slash but it’s really much more than that. The main focus of this game is the fluid combat system and the experience of fighting in a 3 dimensional plane. You can climb up to larger monsters and strike at weak areas, grapple smaller enemies or even chuck them into the air. Speaking of which, unlike Skyrim, the parts you hit actually have differences as to the mobs’ reactions. For example, hitting their feet would cause them to wobble or fall, hitting their faces would most likely be a critical hit or even blind some foes.

“-Adjusted how often pawns will talk by spacing out less important lines; in effect, making them seem to talk less:”

I wonder if this is an across-the-board change that just didn’t go far enough, or if you have to change it yourself and people are missing that. Have you tried visiting a Knowledge Chair to decrease the pawn chatter rate?

The Knowledge Chair only effects your pawn’s chatter, at least in the first game.

I see this as a bit of a missed opportunity for Capcom, if they had pulled a CD Project Red and given it as a free add-on to everyone that bought the original they could have soothed some of the ire they’ve built up from their past actions. On disc DLC, lying about on disc DLC, ending DLC, MvC 3 fiasco, RE 6, etc.

A little late to the party, but with this game coming out for PS plus users today, I was rereading old articles about it. I recently tried the ‘adventure’ demo on the psn and had a TON of fun with it. I actually though it was fantastic, that demo was way better than the first one they released and I tried playing it and the game didn’t really resonate with me, but even in the short ten levels I had, I was greatly impressed with just the amount of options I had.

The graphics were terrible though, but I am relieved to see Arisen has made some improvements.